The mining and mineral processing industries are constantly presented with the difficult question of how to more efficiently locate and process valuable minerals. A major factor adding to the difficulty in this task is that the desired minerals and ore are almost always buried beneath tons of non-valuable material that must first be removed and carried away from the dig site. This material, often called “overburden” in the industry commonly consists of wet mud, clay, and the like which is very heavy and tends to stick to mining equipment.
It is an object of this invention to provide a slip coating for use in the mining and mineral processing industries to help alleviate the problems associated with overburden. In particular, the slip coating described herein is applied to mining equipment to prevent materials from sticking or freezing to the equipment. The invention incorporates naturally occurring oils and a commercially available surfactant in a new mixture that has properties desirable for use in the mining and mineral processing industries.
Prior art products have ingredients that are undesirable, either for their effect on the mining material being processed, or for their effect on the environment. For example, many prior art products include water or yellow grease #2, both of which have serious drawbacks as described herein. The present invention represents an improvement over the prior in that it provides a more efficient, biodegradable slip coating for use in the mining and mineral processing industries, with none of the negative properties found in prior art products.